What simple changes should people do in their lives to make a positive impact on climate change?
I do believe the biggest impact would come from regulating large companies and billionaires, but it’s not one or the other.
I do believe the biggest impact would come from regulating large companies and billionaires, but it’s not one or the other.
Eat less or no meat probably. Enough people drive down meat demand would eventually lead to cattle reduction and less land for grazing.
He'll need one to try to find a time when I'm not shoveling cheese down my throat hole while washing it down with milk.
You: "you'll take cheese and 2% cow milk from my cold dead hands."
Nature: "hold my beer."
I mean, this is the problem. We all will be cold and dead soon if we don't fix this.
This shit ain't hard and people have been working on it for ages. Besides, dairy is a VERY small percent of total greenhouse gas emissions. No, milk doesn't leach hormones into you. No, extra steroids and shit for feed doesn't hurt anyone except MAYBE the actual farmer. Yes, better feed options are getting much more attention which lower N20 emissions. It's a shame I killed my reddit comments because I've had to have this conversation at least 40+ times over there lol.
The U.S. dairy industry is responsible for less than 2 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions in the country. U.S. dairy, per gallon, has the lowest carbon footprint of any country in the world.
https://www.americandairy.com/sustainability/reducing-dairys-greenhouse-gas-emissions/
The dairy industry aims to be carbon neutral by 2050. Here's what it means for farms
Of all GHG emission processes, the most studied and best under-stood is that of enteric CH4 emission. As illustrated, this is normally the largest GHG source on dairy farms.A need still exists for better understanding of dietary effects, and particularly for the effects of feed addi-tives that reduce CH4 production. Because this is a large GHG source, feed additives and diet may provide the greatest opportunity for mitigating dairy farm emissions and reducing the carbon footprint of milk.Relatively little is known about enteric N 2O emissions;this appears to be a small and relatively unimportant source, but more data are needed over a broad range in diets to ensure that a better model of this source is not needed.
https://www.journalofdairyscience.org/article/S0022-0302(17)31069-X/pdf
The U.S. Dietary Guidelines has a few surprises – one of which was that children ages 4 to 18 are not eating the recommended daily intake of dairy products.
https://health.clevelandclinic.org/dont-forget-dairy-part-childs-healthy-diet/ via https://www.dietaryguidelines.gov/
Want alternatives and reasons why dairy is important? There's a reason why being Vegan is so much more difficult than giving eggs, dairy, and fish a pass lol.
https://extension.usu.edu/nutrition/research/dairy-in-your-childs-diet
I don't live in the US. I live in New Zealand.
We don't have a lot of your additives and our milk contains less sugar, for some reason. So I'm not bothered by that stuff.
We are one of the world's large dairy exporters (mostly to China).
The dairy industry here is mostly grass fed, it's a massive emitter of climate change gasses, leading us to be one of the high polluters per capita in the world.
It has also destroyed our river ecology due to fertiliser run off and excrement.
Culturally, domestically New Zealand is a massive dairy consumer (for reference an average household of 3 uses a 1kg (2.2 pound) block of cheese per week, 4 litres of milk and 500g (1 pound) of butter every week. Most Americans are surprised to hear we put butter on all our sandwiches).
I have no intention of becoming vegan.
But I have lobbied my representative for way more legislative curbs on the dairy industry and I have committed to eating less dairy myself.
I'm not au fait with your dairy industry but by 2050 we will look back on the wildfires and storms and landslides we're having now as "the good old days".
Is the reason you are downvoting me because you want me to stop discussing this with you? Because if so, that's ok, I can oblige.
This. Since I gained access: I only buy local, hormone free, open pastured, humanly treated meat. It's expensive as hell so I can only afford to eat smaller portions. It costs what it should cost.
Eating local meat is also a good option, especially with many cattle farms beginning to capture methane and become greener.